how hard it is to get a new idea into people's heads. In brief, this officer is as zealous in attracting audiences, in arousing communities, in promoting the aims of his society, as if he were a man of business creating a market for profitable wares, or a missionary spreading gospel light. Let us note a case or two where the lack of such an officer in the receiving or visiting body has been felt. At Rochester, last August, the American Association was tendered a reception in an art gallery on the upper floors of an office building. Its owner was in Europe, which doubtless accounted for the catalogues of the collection being not lent but sold to his guests, while a staring sign announcing, "To the steel tower—ten cents," was permitted to remain uncovered. At Rochester, too, a city famous for its nurseries, it never occurred to the local committee that visitors would be glad to see these nurseries. Their gates, of course, stood open, yet a very little trouble taken to provide informed guides at a stated time would have added much to the profit and pleasure of a visit. During the week of last Christmas the American Psychological Association met at the University of Pennsylvania. Its first session was held in an upper room of the main building, the second took place in another building some distance off. Because there was no public notification of this change of place, a score of members, teachers, and reporters wasted an afternoon, and missed the presidential address which three of them had come a hundred miles to hear. A few years ago the American Institute of Mining Engineers met at Lookout Mountain. One of the party was the late Thomas Sterry Hunt, an ex-president. In an address which could only come from a master in both chemistry and geology, he described the history of the region at his feet. As he spoke, the conclusions of many thoughtful years were compressed into his pithy sentences. Because he had prepared no notes, and because no stenographer was engaged, that masterly discourse is now only a fading memory.
Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/488
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472
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
M. Lionel Décle, who has lately returned from the Zambesi region in Central Africa, recently visited the underground lake of Sinoie. He describes it as presenting one of the most wonderful specimens which can be given to man to contemplate on the globe. The water is remarkably blue, far more so than that of the blue grottoes of Capri.
Giving his personal and political reminiscences in a recent address, Sir John Lubbock said that he took the first photograph (rather daguerreotype) ever taken in England. Daguerre was a great friend of his father's, and, when be had completed the invention, sent him over a lens with complete apparatus. Sir John, who was then a very small child, was told to remove the cap, and, doing so, achieved the feat.
